vendredi 22 mai 2015

This Park in Ecuador is One of the Most Biodiverse Places on Earth

Deep in the heart of Ecuador's Amazon basin, in the shadows of the Andes and below the equator, lies what may be the most biologically diverse place on the planet. Yasuní National Park in eastern Ecuador is home to millions of species of plants, birds, insects and mammals. It teems with so much life it leaves people lost for words, says Dr. David Romo, co-director of Tiputini Biodiversity Station-Universidad San Francisco de Quito. “People get stuck on awesome. It is hard to use too many words other than awesome because, well, it is,” Romo says with a laugh.

Whether it’s humongous kapok trees, hairy tarantulas, squawking toucans, jumping spider monkeys or fierce jaguars, the diversity of organisms inhabiting Yasuní is astonishing. What is truly hard to fathom, though, is that little of the park has actually been studied. The Tiputini Biodiversity Station was established in 1994 and while scientists have since taken on multiple projects—for example, a... Read more